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Category Archives: Healthcare Reform
Vision Without Execution is Hallucination
Recently Steve Case wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post called Give Entrepreneurs Room and They Will Grow the Economy. For those not familiar with him, Case was the original founding CEO of AOL and he has been an active healthcare investor, among other things, for the past 7 years. My firm, Psilos Group, has previously co-invested with Case’s Revolution Health Fund.
Anyway, it was a very good editorial and one of the statistics within it particularly stood out to me in light of my venture capital role: firms less than five years old have produced 40 million American jobs over the past three decades — accounting for basically all of the net new jobs created in that period. That is a pretty stunning fact and also one that really makes a person scratch their head about current U.S. policy towards start-ups. It is worth watching this Kauffman Foundation 3 minute video that is very instructive about start-ups and job creation.
No where is this issue more relevant than in the healthcare industry, which conveniently happens to be the only thing I know anything about. In a world where … (read the rest)
Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Uncategorized
Tagged affordable care act, ARRA, entrepreneur, extend health, Health policy, healthcare, healthcare IT, healthcare private equity, healthcare reform, healthcare venture capital, Job creation, Medical device tax, medical technology, PPACA, psilos, StartUp Act, Steve case
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Healthcare Reform is Coming to Town!
Last year about this time of year I wrote a parody of Twas the Night Before Christmas about the coming of healthcare IT and meaningful use. I decided to make these holiday parody songs an annual event. I figure I have years of material, as there are so many ways of ruining an otherwise joyous holiday gem by mixing it with healthcare and public policy.
This year’s victim: Santa Claus is Coming to Town, was written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie in 1934. The original lyrics to the song can be found HERE. The song is a little weird because it lets kids know that Santa Claus is watching them all the time like some sort of red velvet-clad big brother machine. If the children aren’t good they won’t get any presents for Christmas, so the song has the extra-added attraction of veiled threat. Kind of reminded me of what’s happening with health reform and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). For those in the healthcare industry, there is definitely a feeling the eyes of government are upon them. Insurers, employers, medical device and … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Reform, Uncategorized
Tagged affordable care act, cms, healthcare, healthcare reform, PPACA, psilos
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Hey, Where Is Everybody Going?
If you are simply reading the paper or engaging in any random cocktail party conversation these days, it doesn’t take long before you are reading or talking about healthcare. Health and healthcare issues have been a dominant topic in the national media since the 2008 Presidential election and have been constantly in the news as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has taken center stage. Even if PPACA weren’t always in the headlines, stories about employers who are grasping for solutions to their healthcare cost crises would still be.
Given the massive amount of change currently underway in the U.S. healthcare economy that has resulted from PPACA, the earlier healthcare IT stimulus legislation (ARRA) and the acts of employers saying that they’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, we have bona fide industry upheaval on our hands. And where there is upheaval, there is opportunity. Today more than ever there is a tremendous opportunity to find new ways of doing business in the world of healthcare through changing delivery systems, insurance models, technology solutions, drug discovery, device innovation and just about everything else that … (read the rest)
Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital
Tagged advanced technology ventures, cmea, fda, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, highland capital partners, medical device investing, morgenthaler, nvca, PPACA, prospect ventures, psilos, scale venture partners, versant ventures
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Well, Well, Well
A couple of months ago the Gallup organization, together with Healthways, Inc., released a preliminary report from their upcoming 2011 Well-Being Index report. The annual Well-Being Index score, which I have written about before (see prior post HERE), is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities. The January through June 2011 aggregate, highlighted here, includes more than 177,000 interviews conducted among national adults, aged 18 and older.
The focus of this preliminary Well-Being Index report was to tell all of us which of the U.S. states’ citizens are feeling the best about themselves. In a time when the economy is putting financial and emotional pressure on the nation as a whole, there are still some places where people are still feeling pretty good. I am guessing these are places where it is hard to get the network news on TV.
As pretty much anyone with a brain could have surmised without a survey to prove it, the state with the highest Well-Being score, and the highest physical and mental health sub-scores, is … (read the rest)
Doing the Right Thing: Priceless
I saw an article when I woke up today and it compelled me to dash off this quick post. Entitled “Wal-Mart Cuts Some Health Care Benefits,” the article details Wal-Mart’s decision to eliminate coverage for new part-time workers who work less than 24 hours/week and to increase costs, including deductibles and premiums, for virtually all other workers. This is a pretty common story right now—you can read it any day of the week in any local paper where large and small business are the primary advertisers in that publication as the economy is driving employers to the brink. With unemployment at a record high and consumer spending driving downward, employers don’t need to offer high benefits to attract workers and can’t afford to spend such a large proportion of their income on them anyway. Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before. Cue violins and angry union workers. People spend their time blaming the PPACA health reform law for wrecking the healthcare benefit system but that ire is misdirected: it’s the economy, stupid, as they say in politics.
Anyway, it wasn’t the overall punch line of the story that … (read the rest)
It’s Official, Hell Has Frozen Over
Are you feeling a little chilly right now? Look around–do you see icebergs? Are baby harp seals collecting around your feet? If not, they should be, because Hell has clearly frozen over: a major U.S. health insurer has decided to give a bunch of money back to its beneficiaries as a result of “excess profits.”
No seriously, I swear it’s true. Blue Shield of California, one of my State’s largest health insurers covering over 3 million people, has just announced that it will return $295 million in “excess profits” to its policy holders, resulting in a more than 50% credit on the December 2011 health premium bill for all insured policy holders and about 18% for others. This is, by the way, in addition to a $180 million dollar rebate Blue Shield of CA gave to their policyholders last month to make up for “excess profits” in 2010. See an article about this HERE.
This is a pretty stunning development, as people generally think that health insurance companies would refund profits only immediately after the Simpson’s Montgomery Burns gives Homer a juicy raise. In other words, not gonna happen. … (read the rest)
The Secret to Lower Healthcare Costs: Dying Faster
As a lover of comedy and satire, I occasionally come across things that would be hilariously funny if they weren’t so damn close to true. In a world where healthcare costs are becoming our nation’s largest economic crisis (enabling Goldman Sachs executives to breathe easy for a moment), the Baby Boomers, who are aging into Social Security and Medicare at a rate of nearly 10,000 people a day right now, have become a rich target for comedians.
A few years back I read a hysterical (and frighteningly realistic) book called Boomsday, by Christopher Buckley (same guy who wrote Thank You for Smoking). In the book, a young female blogger suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75 for the good of the economy and the younger generation. Of course, her proposal is adopted as a leading policy platform by a Senator and would-be Presidential candidate, who jumps on this message of “transitioning” to seek his place in the White House. It is an absolutely hilarious book and includes such discussions as how many narcissistic Baby Boomers would have to adopt the “transitioning” benefit (aka, … (read the rest)
96 Ways To Say “Bite Me”
Once upon a time we marveled at the fact that Baskin Robbins had come up with 31 flavors—what a smorgasbord of opportunity. Then they branched out into seasonal flavors, regional flavors, even frozen yogurt, which vaulted them upwards into having more than 50 flavors. What a joy to behold: more is definitely better when it comes to ice cream.
Same story for television. Some of you, those that are resting comfortably next to me in a nursing home, will remember the old days when we had ABC, CBS, NBC and Channel 13 as the primary TV channel choices. Then there were 13 channels, then around 20, and now my mercenary cable providers shows me more than 700. This example is a little sketchier. More than 4 channels is definitely better. As many as 700? Well, I guess it works if you figure that they are trying to capture everyone in the world’s tastes, even those that want to watch Jersey Shore and Deadliest Catch.
So what do we make, then, of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid’s (CMS) recent announcement of the updating of the diagnosis codes that … (read the rest)
Posted in Diagnostics and Screening, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Reform, Random Thoughts of the Day
Tagged cms, diagnostic codes, healthcare, healthcare IT, healthcare private equity, healthcare reform, healthcare venture capital, icd-10, icd-9, psilos
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CHCF: Proud Sponsor of Our Friday Medical Comedy
I was fortunate enough to be invited to spend a morning last week with the management and investment team of the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF). For those of you unfamiliar with CHCF, it is a non-profit grantmaking philanthropic enterprise based in Oakland, California. Founded in 1996 as a result of the transformation from the old Blue Cross of California to the for-profit Wellpoint Networks, the staff of about 50 people issues around $40 million in grants each year from an endowment of approximately $700 million. CHCF focuses its energies around these four healthcare initiatives:
- Improving clinical outcomes and quality of life for Californians with chronic disease
- Reducing barriers to efficient, affordable health care for the underserved
- Promoting greater transparency and accountability in California’s health care system
- Supporting the implementation of health reform and advancing the effectiveness of California’s public coverage programs
It is a really wonderful organization full of smart people who are dedicated to improving the delivery, quality and financing of healthcare within the State of California, and particularly to improving access to and delivery of care within underserved communities.
The primary reason for my visit there was to … (read the rest)
General Hospital
General Hospital is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production (according to Wikipedia). What a perfect metaphor this is for the real hospital industry, which is facing more drama than ever.
This week I visited two hospitals, one a very large and well-known academic medical center, the other a very small community hospital. Fortunately, neither visit was as a patient. In both cases I was there to talk about healthcare information technology and the hospitals’ respective strategies for innovation in that general area.
It is always really interesting to talk with hospitals about how they want to use technology to enhance their operations. There is an inherent tension between the desire to, on the one hand, do the right thing for patients by continuously improving quality of care and, on the other hand, to respond to the fiscal challenge that sometimes doing the “right thing” might just cost more or at least take a while to pay off. Often times the decision to provide better care can result in hospitals actually losing money, because it means that patients need … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Reform, Patient Safety, Uncategorized
Tagged healthcare, healthcare information technology, healthcare IT, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, hospital information technology, hospitals, patient safety, psilos
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